1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for securely registering, storing and managing users' authentication credentials data, such as unique user names, email addresses, account numbers, passwords, personal identification numbers (PINs), other personal information, and their respective permutations (“Authentication Credentials”) over a network, and for securely transporting users' Authentication Credentials in order to link the users to and log the users onto third party Web sites and applications that are networked via the Internet, Extranet and/or Intranet.
2. Background of the Related Art
Advances in computer processing power and network communications have made information from a wide variety of sources available to users on computer networks. Computer networking allows network computer users to share information, software applications and hardware devices, and internetworking enables a set of physical networks to be connected into a single network, such as the Internet, Extranet(s) and/or Intranet(s). Computers connected to the Internet or connected to networks other than the Internet also have access to information stored on those networks. The World Wide Web (“Web”), a hypermedia system used on the Internet, enables hypertext linking, whereby documents automatically reference or link other documents located on connected computer networks around the world. Thus, users connected to the Internet have almost instant access to information stored in relatively distant regions.
A page of information on the Web may include references to other Web pages and may include a broad range of multimedia data including textual, numerical, graphical, audio, video, and animation information. Currently, Internet users primarily retrieve information from the Internet, through the Web, by “visiting” a Web site on a personal computer that is connected to the Internet. Of course, users can gain access to the Internet through many different types of devices, including, but not limited to, personal computers, wireline telephones, wireless telephones, personal digital assistants, television set-top boxes, digital television set-top boxes, and household appliances. Other devices will be known to those skilled in the art, and are within the scope of this invention.
One of the Internet's greatest strengths is the immediacy by which users can access information, including content, e-commerce, and applications, such as newspaper Web sites, online shopping sites, and Web-based e-mail sites, respectively. However, many of these sites require that the user be registered to view the site, require that each registered user have a unique set of Authentication Credentials, and require that the user log into that particular site or portion thereof that requires user authentication to take advantage of the third party Web site's offerings and/or applications. Logging into a Web site may need to occur at the commencement of a user's visit and/or during the visit to that Web site, and/or at the conclusion of that visit in order to check-out or complete the order. Other occurrences and timings of authentication requirements will be known to those skilled in the art, and are within the scope of this invention. Authentication Credentials are not necessarily a proper name, and may or may not intuitively correspond to the actual user, directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly. Moreover, Authentication Credentials, for example, a user name, password and/or PIN, required at two different sites may in fact differ with each site. Thus, the Internet's strength is mitigated when access to a particular Web site is thwarted because the user cannot remember his/her Authentication Credentials for a respective Web site.
No standard conventions are practiced with respect to protocols for Authentication Credentials on the Web. Thus, Authentication Credentials have varying requirements regarding minimum and maximum character length, case sensitivity, alphanumeric character sequences, special characters, fields, etc. Other Authentication Credentials' requirements will be known to those skilled in the art. Virtually no two Web sites have the same requirements. Moreover, users may find that their preferred Authentication Credentials, such as a user name, are not available on a particular third party Web site because, for example, the user name is already taken by another registered user or does not meet the Web site's criteria for Authentication Credentials. When this happens, users must create new Authentication Credentials for the third party site. Moreover, third party Web sites may assign users with randomly generated Authentication Credentials such as account numbers for airline frequent flyer accounts. While advances have been made in increasing the speed, devices, platforms and bands with which a user may access the Internet, and in improving content search capability and methodology, little has been done in mitigating the proliferation of Authentication Credentials, such as user names and passwords, and in improving the management of Authentication Credentials over the Internet. Moreover, this proliferation has adverse implications to consumer users, business users and the third party Web sites and businesses requiring their respective users to have and use Authentication Credentials. Adverse implications can include, for example, user frustration, abandoned shopping carts, high customer service costs, etc. Other adverse implications will be known to those skilled in the art.